יום חמישי, ט׳ אב תשפ״וThursday, July 23, 2026
Follow Us
Michael A. Helfand is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at Pepperdine University School of Law.
Read More
Halacha, like other legal systems, provides us with rules and values around which we are meant to organize our lives. Our ability, however, to comply with halacha requires that we learn and teach its rules. After all, you can’t comply with the rules you don’t know.
To think of the Sanhedrin as merely an institutional feature of enforcing Jewish law would be to miss the central role Jewish legal institutions – whether it be the Sanhedrin of old or the modern day beit din – play in the ethics of Jewish law.
Sarah’s judgment – her careful balancing of competing demands – is ultimately correct. It is only by following her judgment that the future of the Jewish people will be assured.
Faced with the breakdown of society’s moral and ethical norms, Chazal anticipated the innate human desire to flee from the world.
Mordechai reminds Esther – and all of us – that engaging in advocacy in support of the Jewish people is important not because politics needs our intervention; it is important for our own personal futures.
Maybe the most important lesson I learned during those years was from a rebbe who remarked that the most essential character trait developed in yeshiva by a ben Torah is curiosity.
Eliminating the religious exemption will actually bolster New York’s commitment to religious liberty.
July 24, 2026 
